Letters to a Young Poet: Timeless Wisdom for Aspiring Writers and Creatives

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself.

But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide.

We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.

perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.

life is right, in any case.

“Everyone must find in his work the center of his life and thence be able to grow out radially as far as may be.